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Review by jdgodfrey 
member for 4.6 years, 189 visits, last login: 9 days ago
updated 231 days ago
 Windsor,ON
 $150 per month about 15 days "Great connection reliability. Great technical support and repair solutions." "Bell Mobility is BETTER than most of their competitors technically, but only average on pricing." "Great technology, great support, average pricing."
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Bell Mobility provides excellent technical support and connection reliability. They are probably the best in the business technically. Rogers may come second.
Bell has made certain the Bell Mobility division operates at peak performance, technically and with personnel. They are as good or better than advertised.
Simply not as competitive as the others in the market on pricing. Rogers provides better pricing with similar technology, albeit Bell edges them out technically.
It is the old story, "You get what you pay for!" I like Bell Mobility, even if it is a few pennies more - their technology and support is FANTASTIC!
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 Review by aqk
member for 6.7 years, 164 visits, last login: 36 days ago
updated 1.3 years ago
- Elgin,QC
- $39 per month
- (24 month contract)
- about 120 days
- "Reasonable hi-speed (3mbs) where no DSL landline was available"
- "Gigabytes /mo limited to 3-5 Gig, then cost increases dramatically!"
- "Good value for money- not much more than 56kbs dial-up"
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Landline broadband was not available in this rural neighbourhood.
Choice was between a wi-fi company which had an install/equipment fee of $400+ and Bell Canada's cellular service which shipped a cellular router via postal service for the user to install.
The router was purchased over the internet + phone for $149 on a 2-year contract and easily installed by the user.
The Bell coverage, even in this remote rural area is NOW reliable** and generally provides DL speeds of 3 to 4 mbs with a small user-installed external antenna, in spite of a heavily-treed neighbourhood. The cell tower is approximately 8 Km away.
The main drawback now is the "bandwidth" - 3gig for $35 -above that it's $45, if over 5gig it jumps to $60.
Over 10 gig it becomes 15 cents per megabit!
Still, except for dial-up's unlimited bandwidth, it is far preferable.
Details: »www.bell.ca/shopping/Turbo-Hub-F···sku=THUB
** reliability: The first 4 months were a nightmare of continual 2 to 5 minute timeouts, sometimes 3 or 4 every hour. By late December, Bell had stabilized their cellular network problems, and so far, for the past month the network has been consistently reliable here.
UPDATE!
DECEMBER, 2011- I am now into 18 months of my 2 year contract with the Ericsson W35 turbohub. The only time it has recently "slowed down" was in late November 2011, when WET HEAVY STICKY snow covered all the tree branches in my neighbourhood. But even then, the only thing that degraded was the UPLOAD speed - from 1+mbs down to 100kbs. and the ping slowed also - Due to (I think) wet snow on my small yagi. Obviously I need some bigger transmit power.
Once the snow melted off, situation resumed normally. Even with lots of snow on the trees. Presumably a stronger transmitter on my turbohub would have at least melted the snow on the antenna! 
Al in all, the Turbohub is GREAT! ...
EXCEPT! For the pricey "bandwidth", which is a bitch!
Location: N45.004501, W74.24253 .... Elgin Quebec. AND-
Some 3rd-party dorks (really!) are soon gonna put-up a Bell cellular tower at the BOTTOM of a hill near me! Wow. What a rip-off!
Are you listening, Bell? Yeah, yeah- I know- my only alternative is dial-up...:-(
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 | | bell Wimax its 5:30am i just did a speedtest.net on my ps3 my download speed was 1.79Mb/s and upload was .37 Mb/s my ping was 139 which is pretty good for my wimax i get 6GB a month on my iphone from rogers so instead of runnin wifi from the comp tp the phone sometimes i jus tether my phone to my comp to my ps3 the download on my iphone was 4.12 Mb/s upload 3.18 and ping 149 both from same location so im really considering rogers since they max out at $100 unlike there competitors and theyll be the first with 4G | |
| aqk
join:2006-07-17
Elgin, QC
kudos:1 Reviews:
 ·Bell WiMAX
| Feb 14,2011 -follow up February follow-up:
Well it's been almost two months since Bell finally cleared up their Ericsson W35 problems with the Cellphone network - at least as far as my local tower.
The system is running PERFECTLY. I've hardly had a time-out since late December.
I've had several rural friends complain since then about frequent timeouts on their turbo-hubs, but even this was cleared up once they each purchased a small indoors whip antenna. ($22 or so).
Seems to me that the Ericcson W35 was made for people only in direct view of a VERY local tower. Anyone else GET AN EXTERNAL ANTENNA!
Once again, my only complaint is the low "bandwidth" (I hate this misleading term!) of Bell's Turbo-hub contract. I.E. Anything over 10 Gig starts costing $25 a gigabyte.
Hmnn...  I wonder if the CRTC could make that UBB cancellation decision retroactive for us rural Turbo-hub users who have no other hi-speed option...
--
- The Fibe 0.037 guy
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Review by praetorian7
member for 2 years, 1 visits, last login: 2 years ago
updated 2 years ago
- Montreal,QC
- Contract price not specified.
- "nothing"
- "everything"
- "sux"
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This service was provided to me in a temporary apartment which I paid $3000 per month for.
I used the service for 4 months. (today is the last day, I am moving)
Daily there is a 4 hour window that the service bogs down for.
This window occurs at random times.
Service slows to a 60 second wait to open any web page, and sometimes disconnects completely for up to 6 hours.
Service interruptions occur at least 3 times weekly.
When the service works, dl speed is less than 600kb/s, and upload at 150kb/s.
Customer service is unable to identify the problem, has rebooted modem remotely, sent techs (2 times), and replaced the modem.
The have used excuses like "the head office is re-routing" and they cannot explain what that means.
This is the crappiest internet i have ever had, and I seriously do not recommend it.
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Review by Mike123
member for 4.7 years, 60 visits, last login: 1.3 years ago
updated 3 years ago
- undisclosed location
- $55 per month
- (24 month contract)
- "Low risk to customer"
- "Unreliable speeds"
- "Use it only if nothing else available"
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Ashton Ontario (that's near Ottawa).
I had 2 months free, 2 year contract. Cancellation penalty $110 gets less over time.
Outdoor modem, attached on tower (that I already had), free install - at least, it was for me.
So, the risk to the customer was nil.
The alternative here is Xplornet, but they want 3 year contract with $450 cancellation penalty (!!!). Free install though.
They also double-nat, which means you'll pay $10 extra for static ip to get around this.
Speed often drops to very slow speeds and very long lag times (latency). Ping times can easily approach 4000 ms (that's close to FOUR seconds). Forget about videoing - it SUCKS if you want to share baby videos with the parents...
Download speed varies between 20KB/s to 250KB/s. Sometimes it flies at 200+KB/s and latency well below 100ms. But most of the time I get around 800ms latency and 75KB/s download give or take.
There are also packet loss problems - and that can really suck. Because that means connections have to be re-established. TCP connections need to re-send packets to reach the remote site (and back again). The result is sites not coming down very slowly with major delays before anything begins. Sometimes it becomes completely unusable.
Bell oversells their networks. Too many people on a tower. They even admit this over the phone. Some of them don't tell you a damn thing, others admit it flat out.
There's nothing I can do. I refuse to go to Xplornet, and get stuck with a 3 year contract, only to find out that I might face the same crappy speeds and delay times, and then getting stuck with a FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLAR cancellation penalty.
I've written letters to Xplornet that their business model is just plain dumb. They absolutely do not give a damn.
So now what? I'm sticking with Bell because I don't know what else to do.
Rumor has it that a box down the country road is old and IF it ever gets replaced, we actually might get DSL out here. I'm considering getting a snow mobile just for that, and I might run that box down at 3am in the winter some time... just kidding...
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Review by vladhed4
member for 3.7 years, 1 visits, last login: 3.6 years ago
updated 3.6 years ago
- Perth,ON
- $42 per month
- (12 month contract)
- about 4 days
- "Bell 3G coverage - only"
- "cost per usage"
- "beats dial-up"
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This is Bell Mobilities 3G EVDO network with a "turbo-stick" (Novatel U760 modem). This essentially uses Bell's cell phone network. It has been around for a while but was not cost effective for general internet access. It was priced more for cell phone web surfing and smart phones (e.g. dollars per megabyte).
What has changed is that Bell has reduced the cost by a 100 times. You can now get access to the internet (any IP connection, not just email and web) for pennies per megabyte.
The cost structure per month, AFAICT, inclusing 911 and system access fee, but not taxes:
10$ - less than 25MB that month
37.70$ - less than 500MB (about 6 cents/MB)
42.70$ - less than 1GB (about 3.5 cents/MB)
57.70$ - less than 2GB (about 2.5 cents/MB)
72.70$ - less than 3GB (about 2.2 cents/MB)
92.70$ - less than 5GB (about 1.7 cents/MB)
after that it's 3 cents/MB
There is a 35$ sign up fee.
The USB modem was free with a 12 month contract - otherwise 175$
So it's fine for general web surfing and e-mail, but not if you're a fan of youtube and bitTorrents. It's also good for just having for occational away-from-home internet access as there is a maximum 10$/mo if you don't use it, or only use it occationally for e-mail.
I live in the country side where no DSL is available. There are 3 ISPs in my area that offer line-of-sight microwave but one is very expensive (RipNet) and we can't see the towers of the other two. So far this is the only cost effective solution for our internet needs.
So far it works great - I get from 30KB/s to 80KB/s downloads - works fine with VPN to my work, including VoIP. Ping is in the 50-100ms range.
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Review by spadabear
member for 6.9 years, 3 visits, last login: 3.7 years ago
updated 3.8 years ago
- Fonthill,ON
- $55 per month
- (24 month contract)
- about 15 days
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It is currently the only feasible "high speed" service offered rurally. The connection is unreliable. Peak times are brutally slow, and you can forget the connection all together in poor weather. Customer service always ends with booking a technician to come to the house. Billing issues are the usual nightmare with Bell. All around it is extremely poor value for the money.
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Review by silmarilion
member for 4.8 years, 2 visits, last login: 4.1 years ago
updated 4.7 years ago
- Richmond,ON
- $55 per month
- about 4 days
- "Reasonable speed during day time, simple installation"
- "High cost, low monthly data caps, poor"
- "Expensive and not great performance, but if you can't get DSL choices are limited"
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This is the 3Mbps "Wimax Unplugged" Bell Sympatico service with a 10GB/month data allowance for a total of $55/month.
For a little context I had Teksavvy DSL for several years before moving to a new location where DSL was not available. My experience with Teksavvy was very positive - they set and outstanding example for support quality, network performance and cost. I was loath to return to Bell but as it turned out I only had two wireless high speed options (Bell and Xplornet) and Bell was likely to be the better option.
The Bell website told me I could not get Wimax Unplugged service, but could get "Wimax In-home" 2Mbps service (for a $200 installation charge). Fortunately my neighbour already had Wimax Unplugged service and since I was closer to the basestation than he was it was pretty certain I would be able to get service as well. There are no installation charges for Wimax Unplugged since it is a customer install - the modem sits somewhere inside your house where it can get good signal strength (probably by a window).
I purchased the modem from Bestbuy for $100, although if you call Bell to order service you can rent the modem for $10/month and they will send the modem by mail (much like DSL).
The installation process has the potential to be very simple. although the simplified instruction booklet was a little too simplified - it left out some important details. As a result my service was up and down for a couple of days while I made support calls and it was a total of about 4 days before the service was fully working and stable.
The support centre for Wimax Unplugged is not the usual Bell support centre and the representatives appear to have a good working knowledge of the system. They were able to go in and deal directly with detailed issues, rather than reading from some banal script.
Since I work from home regularly using VPN access to my workplace network I consider the 10GB/month allowance a bit low and compared to Teksavvy it is less than generous, although standard Bell fare. Working from home I have noticed that network performance during the day is acceptable but degrades significantly from 4pm to about 9 or 10pm. Any kind of video performs quite badly any time of day.
The degradation in the evening is so significant that gmail is often inaccessable on imap or smtp for several minutes at a time. Websites may take minutes to load. In my opinion this degradation is unlikely to be a Wimax problem, but more of a core Bell network problem (but seemingly limited to Bell customers since Teksavvy performance was fine - at least up until a month ago when Bell started throttling wholesale customers as well).
Overall I consider the service acceptable since my high speed choices are so limited, but the cost is very high for service that is slower than DSL and has significant periods of degraded operation.
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